Poetry Chaikhana

Sacred Poetry from Around the World

English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah PourjavadyOriginal Language Persian/Farsi

Collect your mind's fragments that you may fill yourself bit by bit with Meaning:the slave who meditates on the mysteries of Creation for sixty minutesgains more merit than from sixty years of fasting and prayer.Meditation: high-soaring hawk of Intellect's wristresting at last on the flowering branch of the Heart:this world and the next are hidden beneath its folded wing.Now perched before the mud hut which is Earthnow clasping with its talons a branch of the Tree of Paradisesoaring here striking there -- each moment fresh preygobbling a mouthful of moonlight wheeling away beyond the sundarting between the Great Wheel's star-set spokes, it rips to shreds the Footstool and the Thronea Pigeon's feather in its beak -- or a comet --till finally free of everything it alights, silent on a topmost bough.Hunting is king's sport, not just anyone's pastimebut you? you've hooded the falcon -- what can I say? --clipped its pinions broken its wings... alas.

This is such an interesting poem to me on several levels. Sometimes Persian poets will make reference to a king's hunting hawk. It is an image of noble bearing, heights of vision, and fierce service. But here Sanai compares meditation itself to a hunting hawk.

Meditation: high-soaring hawk of Intellect's wristresting at last on the flowering branch of the Heart:

That's a great element of the metaphor to contemplate: meditation begins with the intellect, but leaves the intellect behind. It then soars high into the heavens, before coming to rest in the wild, naturally flowering heart. That right there is worth its thinking about more deeply.

soaring here striking there -- each moment fresh prey...

But the lines that describe meditation as a hunter are what most grab my attention. Meditation boldly hunts all of existence, vanquishing everything between earth and heaven. Every single instant is prey for meditation. "Each moment fresh prey..."

For meditation, everything is prey, everything is food. And, as meditation hunts, the meditator sits still, watching in wonder, as this fierce hawk clears away the multiplicities of existence in the vision of unity.

But hawking is the game of kings. Here's our challenge: Do we sport with the world as kings, or do we clip meditation's wings?